Backups – What Smart companies are doing

This post is the first of a new series entitled “What Smart companies are doing”.

I recently worked with a client who is the regional manager for a national staffing service. They were using a single consumer-grade PC to send and receive email and store all of their important documents. The problem started with the computer acting strange and running slow. By the time I got involved, it had reached the point of no return. The hard drive failed, and all of their data was lost. I advised them of their options, which, at this point, there was only one — send the drive to a data recovery specialist at a cost of anywhere from $500 to $2000. Needless to say, the client wasn’t happy.

Which brings me to the point of this article — does your business have a backup system in place to safeguard your important data? If not, you need one! If you already have a backups, have you tested it by performing a restore of your data? If not, you may find out the hard way that your data wasn’t being backed-up as you thought it had.

Another concern that should be on your mind is whether you have a backup system in place for your website. If SmartGuys Design hosts your website, you don’t have to worry. We utilize two different, complementary backup systems for our web hosting clients.

1.) Backup to Dropbox – the WordPress websites we build are configured to regularly backup to Dropbox. It’s a free, secure, and efficient solution for protecting your investment.

2.) Server backup – our new VPS website hosting is fully backed-up, both individual websites and databases, as well as the whole server.

If something happened to the server that is hosting your website, would you have a current backup and know how to access and restore it? If not, you could be putting your investment at risk. The cost of implementing a reliable backup system is far less than the cost of redesigning a website. Contact SmartGuys Design today for a free evaluation of your website, hosting, SEO and backup system.